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CHES Grad Affiliate Tom Conte passed his doctoral dissertation defense this afternoon. Tom's dissertation, Steppe Generosity: Cooperation , Labor Sharing, and Generous Giving Among Mongolian Pastoral Nomads, is based on his 9-month study of pastoralist families in Tosontsengel, Mongolia, one of the most challenging and beautiful environments on the planet. Tom combined ethnographic methods such as participant observation with the implementation of carefully designed economic games, to generate data clarifying the influence of kinship, individual reputation, social networks, and environmental disasters (the "dzud") on human cooperation. The members of Tom's dissertation committee were Lee Cronk (Chair), Dorothy Hodgson, Ryne Palombit, and outside committee member, Simon Wickham-Smith. Congratulations, Tom!
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The Third Lembersky Conference in Evolutionary Studies this coming October will focus on "Advances in Primate Nutritional Ecology, Health, and Energetics". CHES member Erin Vogel (far left in photo) has begun work with collaborators and co-organizers Jessica Rothman (Hunter College, middle in photo) and David Raubenheimer (University of Sydney, far right in photo) on the scientific program, which will examine how nutrient availability varies in ecologically challenging habitats, how primates respond flexibly to this variation by modifying their nutritional strategies, and ultimately how the health of individuals is understandable in light of these processes. The conference will bring together a large group of international scholars and researchers who study both human and nonhuman primates The goal of the conference is not only to enhance significantly our understanding of extant human and nonhuman primate biology, but also to shed light on evolutionary models of hominin energetic responses to the environmental fluctuations that shaped our evolution.
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CHES member Mareike Janiak obtained her PhD in Anthropology last year and is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Amanda Melin at the University of Calgary. Dr. Janiak was just awarded a major grant from the L.S.B. Leakey Foundation to support her research entitles "Understanding adaptive radiation through the evolution of digestive enzymes." Congratulations Mareike!
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"CHES Faculty Member Lee Cronk and CHES alumni Robert Lynch and Helen Wasielewski recently published a paper “Sexual conflict and the Trivers-Willard hypothesis: Females prefer daughters and males prefer sons” in Nature Scientific Reports. The TW hypothesis predicts that parents who are in good condition will bias investment towards sons, while parents who are in poor condition will bias investment towards daughters. Contrary to the expectations of this hypothesis, the researchers found that the socioeconomic backgrounds of the human participants had no effect on their expressed preferences towards offspring of either sex. Instead, however, Cronk, Lynch, and Wasielewski found that in general women prefer daughters and that men have either a slight preference for sons or no preference at all. These patterns were seen across the four measured variables: 1) explicitly stated preferences; 2) responses to timed “Implicit Association Tests” (which detect attitudes that people may be unwilling or unable to report); 3) donations to charities supporting either boys or girls after an experimental prime and; 4) asking subjects if they would rather adopt a daughter or a son. Cronk and colleagues are planning a follow-up study that uses a new design they think is more sensitive to preferences for sons and daughters as a function of socioeconomic status.
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CHES Graduate Affiliate Melanie Fenton was just awarded a major grant from the L.S.B. Leakey Foundation to support her dissertation research "Coercive and affiliative mating tactics in olive baboons (Papio anubis)”. Melanie just arrived in Kenya a few weeks ago to commence this research. More details about her field study can be found at the CHES webpage for the Albert Fellows Dissertation Award. Congratulations Melanie!
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Yesterday CHES held another “Featured Research Evening”, this time showcasing the work of CHES Graduate Affiliate Tim Bransford. For the research that forms the basis of the PhD dissertation he is currently writing, Tim investigated how wild orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus wurmbii) mothers modulate their diet and activity to meet their energetic demands while lactating as well as to buffer their infants from uncertain and variable energy availability. To do this, he had to collect data on orangutan behavior and physiology (from urine samples) as well as phenological data on forest productivity. Tim also talked at length about what it's like doing field research in the peat swamp forests of Borneo.
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Today, the Second Lembersky Conference in Human Evolutionary Studies, focused on "Advances in Paleoecology," got off to an excellent start. CHES faculty member Rob Scott opened the conference (photo to right), whose program he developed in collaboration with Andrew Barr (George Washington University). The 3-day conference is showcasing presentations by 17 scholars from across the country and Europe.
Today's program included a lecture Andrew Du (photo to left), who is a CHES Undergraduate Alumnus and is currently a postdoctoral scholar in Organismal Biology & Anatomy at the University of Chicago.
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"Recently, Dr. Amy Lu of the State University of New York, Stony Brook, delivered a CHES lecture "Male Takeovers and Infanticide Risk: Broadening the Scope of Potential Costs". Dr. Lu's presentation was based on many years' research with Jacinta Beehner and Thore Bergman (University of Michigan) on wild geladas (Theropithecus gelada) living in the high altitude regions of Ethiopia. Dr. Lu presented fascinating insights, not only about the adaptive vale of infanticide as a male reproductive strategy, but also about female counter-strategies to infanticide and, especially, the costs of infanticide—both direct and "hidden"—on females and youngsters."
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CHES Graduate Affiliate Alex Pritchard was awarded a major grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research to support the study of olive baboons (Papio anubis) that he is currently conducting in Kenya. The title of this research is "Variation of Stress Coping: Life in a Socially Complex World”. More details about Alex's research can be found at the CHES webpage for the Albert Fellows Dissertation Award. Congratulations, Alex!
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Last night was the first of this academic year’s “Featured Research Evenings”, which showcased the work of Dr. Jin Xing, Associate Professor of Genetics here at Rutgers. Jin discussed how the significantly declining costs of genome sequencing is facilitating many new research opportunities, such as clarifying phylogenies (evolutionary trees), the action of natural selection to produce adaptation, and population-level phenomena (such as disease occurrence, divergence times, the nature of extinct ancestors). One of the projects in which Jin has been involved recently is examining genetic diversity in the genus Macaca, which comprises more than 20 species of macaque monkeys in Asia and north Africa. The research has greatly improved our understanding of the genetic diversity and evolution of this group of primates as well as general principles of evolution. It was a very rewarding discussion, one consequence of which was generating ideas for some new lines of research (and teaching) for some of the other CHES members present.